How Angels Die by David-Michael Harding Review!!

Product Details Paperback: 420 pages Publisher: Q&CY BOOKS (December 20, 2011) Language: English ISBN-10: 0615503322 ISBN-13: 978-0615503325

     

Two sisters take different roads in their work for the French Resistance

during World War II.  Claire is an active guerrilla fighter while Monique

 seduces German officers to learn military secrets from bedroom pillows.

 Love enters in for both as battles rage in their family over the morality of

killing vs. sex while, unknown to them all, D-Day rapidly approaches.

  

How Angels Die is a highly dramatic novel with very strong female protagonists.  The story is rife with action, conflict, and intrigue.  Through it all, the characters struggle with devotion to family, country, cause, and oneself.  The reader is effortlessly drawn along the storyline and feels the impact of the events surrounding the sisters. Compassion for the characters, German as well as French, runs deep and captures the imagination as coastal war-torn France comes alive on the pages.

About the author

David-Michael Harding is a life-long writer whose novel, How Angels Die, received critical acclaim. A former semi-professional football player, his writing is hard hitting and passionate. He holds a master’s degree in education and is an adjunct professor of writing. Most of his days are spent writing from the cockpit of his sailboat, Pegasus, somewhere off the Nature Coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

More than a war story, How Angels Die (WGA registered/125K wds) compels its readers to face the decision-making processes that bring us to where we are and who we are.  It also asks questions of the mind that expose prejudices and the eventual regret that follows.

 

"In How Angels Die Harding delivers an edge of the seat read as he skillfully summarizes the events and pain of years of conflict during the Nazi occupation of France into ninety-six gut wrenching, mesmerizing hours." David Roth, Tampa Writing Examiner 

My Thoughts

I received this book for review and my hubby actually got to it before I did and he kept telling me how he really liked the story. I love historical fiction but usually prefer the medieval periods. I have recently been reading more stories that take place after or during WWII. How Angels Die takes place in occupied France and revolves around two sisters who both fight in the Resistance but in different ways. One sister does her part by dancing and sleeping, if necessary, with German officers, to gain information and the other sister fights with guns and missions to rid France of the hated Nazi's. 

There are other characters within the story, the sisters family and other resistance fighters which all together make for a very tense and thrilling novel. There is love, loss and family dynamics and the travesty that is war that makes this book a real page turner. I loved it from beginning to end and I highly recommend it to all the history buffs out there. I actually learned quite a bit about the French Resistance.

I received a copy for review and was not monetarily compensated for said review.